


Bless The Broken Road

by SkySamuelle



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 19:52:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkySamuelle/pseuds/SkySamuelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What are you thinking?" "I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you," he mutters gruffly to her.<br/>Future Fic. ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bless The Broken Road

_"I set out on a narrow way many years ago  
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road  
But I got lost a time or two  
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through  
I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you_

Every long lost dream led me to where you are  
Others who broke my heart they were like Northern stars  
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms  
This much I know is true  
That God blessed the broken road  
That led me straight to you" From God Blessed The Broken Road" by Rascal Flatts

\--

It's a quiet evening in Marken when Damon's mind inadvertently falls on a rather sentimental, melancholic pattern.

Marken is a relatively small village in the Netherlands, not too distant from Amsterdam but all green fields, green painted wooden houses with white roofs, picket fences, and sheep and ducks traipsing about few meters from human habitations. It's peaceful, kids riding on bikes and serene silence spreading throughout the neighborhood, occasionally broken by some tourist groups' idle chatter and mothers caring for their perfect gardens, all different from each other, or putting their laundry on cords to dry out.

It's the kind of place he would have never seen himself spending a weekend let alone three months, but after Bonnie fell in love with the place he had gotten it in his head to keep her here as long as he could. Just because her green eyes had widened and lit up like she was a child in a candy store when he had brought her here for a short excursion.

And looking at the witch now, wrapped in her form-hugging red coat as she leans forward to feed the ducks in the river, a glowing, utterly girly smile on her full lips, Damon discovers he doesn't actually mind the wet, windy weather he loathed so much the first time he visited Holland decades ago. He's not even annoyed at the villagers' overtly friendly attitude and the countryside scenery. He does not even want to rip his hair out for the lack of city entertainments.

The quietness is okay because nothing interferes with their _alone time_ – in three months, there's been no supernatural threat to their lives, no childhood friends distracting her from him, no duties or responsibilities or past issues coming between them.

This is how he comes to fully explore the differences between todays and yesterdays – he remembers that, for a very long time, his relationship with Bonnie was characterized by ill-foreboding distance.

In those times he saw her as a contender that he could respect, and she hated his kind so angrily, despising him for all he was worth. He had sensed the gap between them like it was a physical force no forceful grasping or hissing in her face could trespass.

He had loved Katherine for being the cruel Mistress who created a distance between him and his human failures, and he had loved Elena for filling the gap between him and Stefan, the emptiness he had created by himself. But Bonnie, he had loved just for the beautifully sane person she was.

The beautifully sane person she still is, despite her being in love with him, and for someone like him, whose control and grip on sanity slip erratically, that's a blessing. She is his calm in the storm, and he adores her for it.

So much that he can vacation in a place like Marken not only without going ballistic, but even being pathetically content in it, just because for once he has all he needs in his grasp.

And he must shake his head at the puzzling strangeness of this, because he has no idea how he has missed it: she is the most beautiful damn thing he has ever seen, and she is _his_. The distance he used to feel between them is no longer there, and they have grown so intimately connected to each other that the idea of having cherished another woman before her feels just as alien as the idea of wanting somebody else after having her.

As if she could perceive the troubling broodyness of his thoughts, Bonnie turns toward him, eyeing his frown and mostly blank expression with a hint of suspicion.

' _Damon Salvatore + Heavy Thinking = Red Alert'_ is what he can read clearly enough on the crease between her eyebrows, and it makes him smirk a bit sinisterly at her, just for the thrill of it.

"I'm _remembering_. Being here with you is like taking a walk backwards, to another century."

He tucks her dark hair behind her ear, smirk widening as her body shudders slightly against his, leaning instinctively into the touch.

Here, in this measly fishing village halfway between modern era and ancient times, he can nearly pretend he had not spent ages trying to prove God-knows-what-anymore to either Katherine or Elena (or maybe, he believes _sometimes_ , to himself). He can imagine that there was no time and no pain wasted on women that never could have him made as happy as he is today with his little witch.

If only he could have just let go of Katherine instead of dragging his heels and transferring all that load of unresolved longing and despair on Elena, he and Stefan might, maybe, have found some way to rebuild a minimal degree of trust. If only he could have seen before that Bonnie was the right one.

They might have the rest of their lives to spend together now, but it hardly seems enough. The years he threw away, ignoring those instincts that pushed him toward the witch, they will never have back.

"I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you" he mutters gruffly to her, and for a moment he wonders how he can possibly explain the feeling inside him.

He can't avoid thinking that all they needed, at any given moment of their shared past, was a small extra push and they would have fallen into each other and for each other easily.

It almost angers him that what he enjoys now has been kept from him for so long, and he can't articulate his thoughts without sounding resentful but a glance at Bonnie's softening features suffices to prove that he doesn't need to explain anything. He can tell she feels the same way he does, that the same concept must have occurred to her at some point.

"I've thought of that too sometimes," she adds, leaning her head on his shoulder.

"It's a damn shame," Damon growls, surrounding her waist with an arm to draw her petite frame closer. "We could have had _years_ of this."

Bonnie kisses his chin affectionately, nuzzling his throat to soften the blow her words might cause.

"We would have made a mess if we had gotten together before. We were coming from such different places in the beginning, and I'm not sure Love is always enough to force everything to flow the way you want. Even if we could have loved each other early on and have found a way to make it work… it probably would have been way more painful. I mean, happiness takes hard work too and right then it was hard enough to be who we were."

Damon would be tempted to take offense at her contemplations if he didn't remember well enough that once upon a time his ways of dealing with rejection had included snapping Jeremy's neck. Not to mention how his nurturing of a relationship with Stefan had consisted of emotional torture and killing anyone his brother got close to for DECADES.

He is suddenly glad that he had the sense to never give himself the chance to hurt Bonnie like that. He has taken enough from her as it is.

He kisses her brow, his fingers threading through her soft curls, and he is just grateful that he has found her at last.

Because after all, if he had not obsessed over Katherine Pierce, he would have never protected the Bennett line, and perhaps Bonnie would never have been born, and if he had not chased after Elena Gilbert, he would have never gotten to truly know her best friend. So maybe there was meaning somewhere and he had been exactly where he was supposed to be all along: on the bumpy road that brought him straight and safe to Bonnie's heart.


End file.
